


Why?

by sg_wonderland



Category: Angel: the Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-23
Updated: 2011-10-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sg_wonderland/pseuds/sg_wonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley tries to deal with his betrayal and the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why?

Why?

 

“You know it’s me, right?” The monster always waited for that little nod before he sank his fangs into that long, white, scarred neck.

 

Wesley jolted awake. Again, he thought, blearily as he checked the clock, knowing the time. Three forty-two. It was always three forty-two when he dreamed of Angel killing him.

Hard experience taught him that sleep had definitely left the building. So he got up, as was his new routine. Showered, shaved carefully, had a pot of tea laced with a decent splash of whiskey, surfed the ‘Net for anything a diligent former Watcher might need to know, dressed in a carefully selected suit and departed for another day. He quietly did his work and ignored everything else.

He sought atonement the only way he knew-by battling evil, by fighting the good fight.

For that was all he had left now that his friends, former friends, had deserted him without a backward glance. His wounded heart hurt much, much worse than his slashed throat.

None of them, not Gunn or Fred or even Angel, had walked in the door and asked the question that Wesley patiently waited in the hospital to hear. He loathed the fact that somewhere inside, he was still the stupidly naïve Watcher who knew he could make them all understand, he could justify his actions to the disbelieving if they would just listen. When the truth finally dawned in a single moment of quietly painful clarity, he fervently wished he hadn’t struggled, that he’d given Angel his required pound of flesh, had let him end his life.

His life, that was a joke. If he’d thought he was a failure before, he certainly had proof now. All he had to show for his life was a slit throat, a pillow pressed over his face and his ass booted out the door. Chiding himself for wallowing in self-pity, he once again donned the mask of indifference that had served so well in the past and politely asked the doctors to let him go. Telling any lie it would take to just get the hell away from there, back home-Christ, that was yet another joke-but he wanted, craved, the solitude of his flat. Where he could revoke Angel’s welcome, ignore the silent phone and try to live something akin to a life.

He’d briefly toyed with chucking it all and dragging the bike out, just leaving. England beckoned to him as never before; he hadn’t realized how truly homesick he was. But that goddamned Watcher training kicked in and he stayed. Stayed to see if he could make some kind of a difference in the world that had turned on a frightening axis and was no longer any place he recognized.

Because no one came and no one asked.


End file.
